On and on to Curaçao, where the boat was wrecked; on to Rio Hacha in Colombia, where the wind failed them and they were taken prisoner. Another break, this time with a Colombian friend, and eventually Papillon reached hostile Indian territory, alone and on foot. They took him in, gave him two wives, and then, when at last he would stay no longer, a bag of pearls. Back to Colombia, only to be arrested and imprisoned once more, and, after several abortive breaks, handed over to the French authorities. Then solitary confinement on the Ile Saint-Joseph-a deeply moving account of the silence, the heat and the utter loneliness of that dim, timeless, underground cage- two years of it. When at last it was over and he was out in the light again, he began to make a raft for another break; but a fellow convict informed upon him, and having killed the informer he went back to solitary-an eight years' sentence cut to nineteen months for rescuing a little girl from the sharks. Another attempt at escape; transfer to Devil's Island; and then the final break at last, riding two sacks of coconuts through the shark-infested sea to the mainland. A new boat and a new series of adventures brought him to Venezuela and to the Venezuelan penal settlement at El Dorado, where he was held on the charge of being a rogue and a vagabond. But a coup d'etat in Caracas brought the promise of release, and the last pages of the book show Papillon, equipped with genuine papers at last, and dressed in good civilian clothes, ready to walk out into freedom after fourteen years of being in prison or on the run. That is where the present volume starts, and from now on his story is told in his own infinitely more living words.

PATRICK O'BRIAN